We have the pleasure to invite you to another research seminar in the ‘BIOUNCERTAINTY’ research project. This time Saul Smilansky will give a talk: "Suicide, Organ Donation and Meaning in Life: Some Disturbing Reflections". The seminar will take place on Monday 24th October at 4:00 p.m. in the room 25 on Grodzka Street and via MS Teams.

 

Abstract:

Our discussion begins with certain facts: (a) Every year, hundreds of thousands of people intentionally kill themselves (and social efforts to prevent suicides are fairly feeble); (b) For such people, the act of killing themselves usually confers no positive objective meaning on their lives, and subjectively they often kill themselves with a sense that life, or at least their life, has no positive meaning; (c) Every year, hundreds of thousands of people die, for want of properly functioning organs, and had a liver, or a lung, or a kidney, for example, been donated to them on time, they could have been saved. Millions suffer before dying and could be similarly helped. I present, first, a "Modest plan" (MP) for publically connecting organ donation with meaning in life. This would involve donating e.g. a kidney when alive. Second, an "Ambitious plan" (AP) which focuses on potential suicides. I explore whether these plans ought to be applied, and consider the dangers. I ask whether we might speak about a moral duty, if one kills oneself, to do so in a way that will permit use of one’s organs; and claim that it is plausible. I then look at what our likely resistance to these proposals indicates. At the end, I briefly explore some further bold possible implications of the discussion, for current organ allocation and particularly with respect to the opportunities and dangers opened by future technology. The lessons of this exploration seem surprising and radical.

About the author:

Saul Smilansky (D.Phil., Oxford) is a Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Haifa, Israel. He works primarily on normative and applied ethics, the free will problem, and meaning in life. Currently he is working on the idea of "Crazy Ethics", a view of morality where frequently matters seem to be true (or at least plausible) yet are also absurd. He is the author of Free Will and Illusion (Oxford University Press 2000), 10 Moral Paradoxes (Blackwell 2007), and over one hundred papers in philosophical journals and edited collections. 
  

Link to the MS Teams meeting